Real Coffee with Scott Adams - Episode 1036 Scott Adams： White-Looking Jesus, Fake News Being More Shameless Than Usual, Presidential Tweets

00:00:00.000 Hey anybody here today? Come on in. If I'm here you should be here. Yeah we got

00:00:14.220 stuff to talk about. Yes we do. And that will happen directly after the

00:00:19.560 simultaneous sip. I know you'll enjoy it. It's gonna be a good one. Now you might

00:00:26.160 wonder why I don't do the normal introduction to the simultaneous sip

00:00:30.960 today and there's a reason. I can't remember it. That's right. I read it every

00:00:35.920 single time. One of the tricks of writing is that things that you can read are

00:00:43.980 very different than things you read out loud. So if you're gonna write

00:00:48.240 something for the purpose of reading it out loud, if you're gonna be reading it

00:00:52.660 that's fine. But something you were gonna memorize and say, you might write it

00:00:57.040 differently. But we're gonna enjoy the simultaneous sip right now. Do you have a

00:01:04.840 cup? A mug? It's the dopamine hit of the day. The thing that makes everything

00:01:08.620 better. And you're getting ready for it. Now go. Good stuff. So last night I was

00:01:26.060 getting ready to go to sleep. Winding down. I was in bed and I thought to myself, I'll

00:01:33.100 check Twitter one more time. Here's what you should never do if you're trying to

00:01:39.100 wind down and go to sleep. Don't ever check Twitter right before you go to

00:01:44.800 sleep. It's a very bad sleep strategy. And so I open up Twitter and I see

00:01:53.800 somebody's making a comment that's referring to the president retweeting me,

00:01:58.580 which he did the day before yesterday. And I thought, oh, they're still talking

00:02:02.820 about this. This was the day before yesterday. But then I looked at the

00:02:06.500 comment. I thought, well, this doesn't seem like it's about that one. So I click on

00:02:10.160 it and he had retweeted me again. So it was the second retweet in two days. And I'm

00:02:17.100 thinking, well, aren't I pretty special? And then I saw another one. I thought, are you

00:02:24.820 kidding me? He retweeted me three times in two days? But it wasn't true. It was not

00:02:33.660 true that I got retweeted three times in two days by the president because it was

00:02:39.020 four. He tweeted me four times in the last 48 hours. We'll talk about those. And I got

00:02:47.820 to tell you, it's the weirdest experience to get retweeted by the president because

00:02:54.020 it's simultaneously big and small at the same time. So the big part is that he's the most

00:03:00.520 important politician on the planet. And even if it were not just the job of the president,

00:03:07.280 he's also the biggest personality and the biggest job. I mean, it's Trump, right? And

00:03:14.300 so when he tweets about you and he referred to me as interesting guy, I'm not sure if that's

00:03:19.940 my forever name yet. It doesn't have the crisp, insulting quality of his other nicknames.

00:03:28.680 So I don't know if I can call myself an interesting guy. It just needs to be a little more insulting.

00:03:35.820 So maybe I can ask him for that later. Can you give me a nickname that's just a little bit

00:03:40.080 derogatory? Because I don't think I can go with this one. It's not going to work. Anyway,

00:03:45.160 so that's the big part is that it's the biggest, you know, the most important personality in

00:03:49.460 the world who is apparently, I caught his attention four times in 48 hours. So that's

00:03:56.620 the big part. The small part is that when I'm experiencing it, it's just me and my phone.

00:04:04.160 You know, Christine is in another room. And it's just like, ah, just me and my phone. That's

00:04:10.540 it. So it's the weird combination of things. And then I woke up and saw a lot of comments

00:04:16.440 that other people saw. So we'll talk about those things in a minute. I tweeted yesterday

00:04:24.180 that if I ever become president, seems unlikely, but if I ever become president, I want to do

00:04:30.000 such a good job that the news is about stuff like drinking water with two hands, walking

00:04:40.160 down a ramp, tweeting about stuff. Have you noticed that the criticisms about Trump are

00:04:50.020 completely off topic of his job performance? Have you noticed that it happens kind of subtly

00:04:56.820 because we get so drawn into each story? It's hard to to look at the larger trend, you

00:05:02.320 know, you get lost in the details. But if you just rise up for a minute and look at the

00:05:06.760 headlines, let me call up. Let's just call up CNN randomly. Let's see. You see the types

00:05:15.060 of stories that are anti Trump. There's something about Breonna Keillor confronts Trump Trump campaign

00:05:25.520 saying, are dead Americans funny to you? All right. So the best, the best they could do is that 1.00

00:05:35.240 there's a campaign official who laughed about a joke. Okay. Here's another one. Trump takes first

00:05:43.500 trip to the border. So that's a nothing. First trip to the border in 2020. Okay. How about

00:05:50.580 fact checking Trump's mail-in vote fraud claims? All right. Let's check that. So John Avalon is

00:06:00.700 checking Trump's mail-in fraud claims. And as his source, he uses PolitiFact. So he refers

00:06:07.580 to PolitiFact and they have this little logo, you've probably seen it, that shows the meter

00:06:13.020 going from, you know, false to true. And if it's really false, it's like it's on fire. You know,

00:06:19.320 it's a lie. So PolitiFact is their source for CNN to fact check the president. So I thought to

00:06:25.840 myself, well, I wonder how credible they are. So I thought, I'll check the one thing that I know

00:06:32.540 what the truth is. And it's the fine people hoax. And everybody who reads the transcript knows the

00:06:40.020 truth. So this one's easy. You don't have to wonder what the truth is, because it's just

00:06:45.420 written right in front of you. There's no interpretation. It's pretty obvious. So you

00:06:50.400 should go to PolitiFact, presumably, if it's a credible outfit. And it will have this little

00:06:56.380 meter, which it does for all of its facts. And that fact will say the fine people hoax,

00:07:02.460 or the fine people story that the allegation of the president called the marching Nazis, fine

00:07:08.520 people, it should have a big flaming false, right? If PolitiFact is credible, that's what it would

00:07:16.580 be. So I look it up. And I'm looking for the logo. And it's not there. It's not there. The logo,

00:07:26.940 the little flaming truth-o-meter, is the primary branding thing that they do. They put it on every

00:07:32.920 story. So every story has that, except for the fine people hoax. Instead of telling you it was true or

00:07:40.920 false, they said, we're just going to show it to you in context. Here's the transcript. Why would a

00:07:48.420 fact-checking organization not check the fact on the most important fact of the entire presidency?

00:07:56.940 In my opinion, it's the most important fact. Because more than anything, it's what's behind the

00:08:01.840 imagination that the president is a obvious racist and everybody knows it. And here's the evidence 0.91

00:08:07.940 because of this fine people hoax. Think about it. PolitiFact left their fact-checking off the biggest

00:08:16.660 lie in politics. Didn't say it was true. Didn't say it was false. They just left it off. Think about

00:08:24.420 that. And that's the source. The CNN uses to fact-check them. So the CNN claim is that mail-in

00:08:33.780 ballots would not be a massive fraud opportunity. They might be debating some of the details of

00:08:40.740 that. And I would imagine the president is speaking quite approximately, as he often does.

00:08:47.520 So he may not be true on every fact. But is there any thinking person who believes that mail-in

00:08:57.580 ballots are not an opportunity for fraud? I can't even wrap my head around the opposing argument.

00:09:04.720 I really can't. So that's weird. Here's what else they say. Trump falsely accuses Obama of treason.

00:09:17.000 So again, here's one of the biggest, the worst criticism they could find of Trump's job performance.

00:09:23.260 That has nothing to do with his job. It's just something he said about Obama in a political season.

00:09:28.260 And he exaggerated, perhaps used treason when really he meant bad behavior, you know, not technically

00:09:36.300 treason. Is that a story? Again, if I run for president and become president, the best you could

00:09:44.860 do is to have your biggest critics have nothing to say about your actual performance on the job and

00:09:52.340 only talk about your personality. Talk about some unimportant things that you said that might have

00:09:58.660 been wrong. That's it. That's the worst they have on Trump. Are they talking about the economy?

00:10:06.200 Do you know what November 3rd is going to look like? Here's what November 3rd is going to look like.

00:10:13.380 The economy is going to be roaring back at record percentages, which will be misleading because

00:10:20.460 we're coming off a low base. So just as Obama's performance with the economy was misleading because

00:10:27.080 he too was coming off a depressed base, everything looks good from there. Trump is going to get that

00:10:32.640 same imaginary benefit. He's going to be able to say, hey, look, we had a coronavirus and things are

00:10:39.960 up X percentage. Somebody says the Dow is screaming up. I'll bet it is. So the president's going to have

00:10:48.540 an economy that's coming back. I don't think people will blame him for the president, for the economy

00:10:54.120 being depressed, but they might credit him for it coming back. And I think that would be fair because

00:10:59.520 he has been pushing for it to come back even at maybe greater risk for health problems.

00:11:04.880 And so the economy will look good. What else we got? Let's take China. How is the president going to

00:11:15.680 look in terms of China trade? Well, I think China's reputation is so bad that because Trump has been

00:11:23.600 tough on China in general, he's going to look smart because he was tough on China. And it looks like 0.98

00:11:30.800 his instincts about China have been completely proven true. So that's what about ISIS? ISIS is

00:11:41.460 gone. ISIS is completely gone. Do you remember ISIS? Wasn't there a time you were worried that ISIS

00:11:48.260 was going to conquer the world? It's gone, basically. I mean, at least territorially, it'll never be gone

00:11:55.080 as an idea, I suppose. So you can kind of go down the line if you were to if you take whatever you

00:12:00.580 think are the top five things, right? Take the top five issues. He looks pretty good. There was a

00:12:09.100 Rasmussen poll

00:12:10.000 that said that something like 24% of black likely voters, so it's not the entire population,

00:12:21.860 it's just the likely voters who are also black Americans, strongly approve of their president's

00:12:28.660 job approval. Do you believe that? So this is Rasmussen. Now, Rasmussen, I think, was the

00:12:35.860 most accurate poll of the major polls, the most accurate in 2016. And they're saying that

00:12:43.000 about a quarter of black likely voters approve or strongly approve of the president's performance.

00:12:51.860 Do you think that's true? I think it is, actually. Just anecdotally, and of course,

00:13:00.980 you know, anecdotally doesn't mean much. But it is my impression that he may have doubled his

00:13:06.540 support in the black community. And why wouldn't he? Why wouldn't he? Right? Because I think the

00:13:13.700 black community is looking at the same stuff everybody else is looking at. Do you think the

00:13:19.300 black community likes crime? No. Do you think the black community likes a bad economy? No. 0.98

00:13:28.900 Do you think the black, you know, community likes, you know, bad trade deals? No.

00:13:33.800 No. So, yeah. Why wouldn't he have doubled support, even against all the bad press? Seems like he

00:13:41.780 would have. All right. Some other things. So one of the things that the president retweeted

00:13:50.940 was my tweet in which I was tweeting about Sean King. Now, you all know Sean King. He's an activist,

00:13:59.760 one of the most famous ones. And he's a black. Would you say he's a black activist? Or he's an 0.84

00:14:08.300 activist for black issues? Now, the reason I ask that is that the, and I can't tell the story

00:14:14.300 without this. All right. So when I start giving you this context, the first thing you should say is,

00:14:20.740 how is that relevant to the story? Yeah, you're seeing it in the comments. So he is an activist for

00:14:27.980 the black community who has the interesting distinction of not appearing to be black.

00:14:36.160 Now, I'm not going to, I have no opinion of what his DNA is, right? So I'm not going to go there.

00:14:41.420 I'm just saying that the public opinion, other people, not me, look at him and say, 0.86

00:14:47.680 dude, you don't even look black. I don't think you're black. Now, I don't know what he is. 0.99

00:14:52.700 I'm not going to give you an opinion on that. I just think it's, it's, uh, it's sort of obnoxious

00:14:58.180 to tell other people what they are. So, uh, uh, so I'm not going to, I'm not going to get into

00:15:04.380 that argument. I will simply, I'll simply note that the most famous thing about Sean King is that

00:15:12.540 he's not black enough, according to his critics. Okay. And when I say not black enough, I mean,

00:15:19.820 he looks like a white guy. Again, nothing wrong with that. I'm not saying he's white. I don't know 0.88

00:15:25.620 anything about his DNA. I don't even have an opinion. I don't even care. Right. I literally

00:15:30.760 couldn't care about any of that, but it's important to this anecdotal story here.

00:15:37.320 So he was asked about whether, uh, the depictions of Jesus, who looks sort of white and European in

00:15:45.300 most depictions, if he thought that that needed to be changed to be more historically accurate. And

00:15:53.000 let's say incorporating the assumption that Jesus was, uh, less European looking and probably more

00:16:00.560 middle Eastern looking. And this is what Sean King tweeted. He said, yes, I think the statues of the

00:16:06.560 white European they claim is Jesus should also come down, meaning like the statues and stuff.

00:16:11.860 They're a form of white supremacy. Always have been in the Bible. When the family of Jesus wanted to 0.71

00:16:18.220 hide and blend in, guess where they went Egypt, not Denmark, tear them down. So that was Sean King's 0.86

00:16:27.580 tweet. Now here is the fascinating psychological part of this. The fascinating part is that when you see

00:16:36.600 this tweet, isn't your first impression that the slippery slope, you know, started with one statue

00:16:43.660 and then it was lots of statues and then it's, and then it's, uh, you know, Teddy Roosevelt and,

00:16:50.160 you know, and the next thing, you know, it's going to be Jesus. Is that your first impression that you

00:16:56.220 started with something that wasn't that big a deal? It was just a statue, one statue in a world full of

00:17:00.900 statues, but then it was lots of statues. And now it's my God, they're coming from my religion.

00:17:06.920 That's what it feels like, right? But let me suggest that if this had been the first and only issue,

00:17:14.340 if you'd never heard about any statues, there was, there were no protests going on. If the only thing

00:17:20.020 you heard of was just this point, Hey, why is Jesus always depicted looking European?

00:17:26.880 Wouldn't you think that was actually pretty reasonable as a complaint? Seriously, if it was the only one

00:17:34.980 you weren't judging it as a continuation of something, maybe you've got a problem with. If it was just by

00:17:42.160 itself in isolation, it's actually the most reasonable, it's the most reasonable complaint, which is what I

00:17:49.460 said. So when I retweeted Sean King, I thought to myself, you know, um, you know, in these times,

00:17:56.880 of great division and stuff like this, I don't disagree with that even a little bit. In fact,

00:18:02.460 I've thought that all my life. When I went to Sunday school as a kid, you know, I'm 10 years old,

00:18:07.720 and I'm looking at white Jesus, and I'm looking at the Middle East, and I'm 10. And I'm thinking, 0.69

00:18:13.860 how's this work? How'd you get this European guy born and born in the Middle East? So, 0.55

00:18:22.800 and then Sean King's characterization of it, it says it's a form of white supremacy. Now, if you've

00:18:30.680 been watching me for a while, you know that I've been criticizing anybody who uses the word white

00:18:37.020 supremacy, because it's just hyperbole, and it's really not in a lot of the examples that people

00:18:43.380 are using. In terms of how white people are thinking about it, anyway, it has nothing to do with

00:18:48.680 any of that. So I think most of that is just overblown. But in this particular example,

00:18:53.680 I've got to say, he's got kind of a point here. Because religion is, you know, what's more important

00:19:00.700 than religion? And Christianity being one of the big two, I guess, religions, it's super,

00:19:08.900 super important in the world and in people's lives. And sure enough, the racial identity of historical

00:19:17.040 Jesus was changed to make it white-like. How is that good? And somebody in the comments is saying

00:19:27.700 he was a Jew, and they could look any number of ways. Well, I think that that's a fair statement

00:19:34.080 that there are people who look all different ways. But I don't think anybody would disagree

00:19:38.680 that the artistic renderings of Jesus were intended to look like a European. Okay, I'm not saying it's

00:19:47.240 impossible that somebody could look a certain way, and it's different from the other people.

00:19:51.680 But I think you would agree that they intended to make him European. Don't you feel that that's a 0.84

00:19:56.900 safe statement? I mean, I'm not a historian, but it feels like that's safe, right? So I think Sean

00:20:03.340 King was just right, right? I will be happy to criticize him in places where I think he's wrong.

00:20:12.560 But why can't we just agree with him when he's right? And I think what's fascinating about this

00:20:17.320 is if you've taken the context away, you would say, yeah, you know, that's a pretty good point.

00:20:21.260 Maybe you should do something about that. Now, I'm not a believer, so it's not up to me. I'm not in

00:20:27.980 this fight at all. I don't, whichever way it goes is fine. I think, I think everybody should see Jesus

00:20:36.000 the way they want to, right? Why can't Jesus be exactly the Jesus you want to see? Why can't black 1.00

00:20:43.180 people have black Jesus? Why can't, you know, why can't the Chinese have Chinese Jesus? Because he is 0.97

00:20:51.020 Jesus, right? You're not exactly fitting into a, you know, fitting into a little box. There's only

00:20:58.060 one of them. So whatever, whatever the believers want to do with Jesus, that would be their business.

00:21:05.680 Here is a horrible little story. Oh, and so what's interesting about that is that the president

00:21:11.780 retweeted my comment, which was in, which was also agreeing. Part of the comment was, I said,

00:21:19.900 Trump just won 2020. Because if the protesters come after Jesus, that's the end of the election,

00:21:28.160 isn't it? Now, the Sean King thing probably will just stop with a, you know, one tweet. But imagine,

00:21:35.060 if you will, that it becomes a thing. Even if I agree with it being a reasonable thing that

00:21:41.640 should be discussed, it is the end of the election. Is there anybody who would disagree with that?

00:21:46.640 That if this Jesus thing became more of an issue than it is more than just a tweet,

00:21:52.460 it would be the end of the election. So President Trump retweets it. Do you see how clever that is?

00:22:02.100 Do you see how clever it is for the president to retweet that? Because in its, in its form as it was,

00:22:09.240 you know, just as a tweet, it's just a blue check person who tweeted something that has been said

00:22:15.840 before, not much to it. But because the president tweeted not only my comment that it would, that would

00:22:23.900 basically be the election, but he also tweeted the part where I agreed with Sean King. Think about it.

00:22:30.900 He didn't make a comment about it. He just tweeted it. So the fact that he would want to boost that signal

00:22:39.280 because it's good for his campaign is pretty clever. I'm going to say that was a, that was a well-chosen

00:22:45.360 retweet. Because if that gets bigger, the election's over. Here's a, I'll get back to some more Trump

00:22:56.040 retweets in a minute. There was an appalling story about something the New York Times did that is one

00:23:03.580 of the most despicable things you'll ever see in any entity, especially a news business. So the New

00:23:11.440 York Times decided to do a story about a fairly famous blogger who conceals his real identity.

00:23:20.080 And he blogged under the name of Scott Alexander, but that was actually his middle and his first and

00:23:28.160 middle name. So his real last name, he keeps secret because he, he's a psychiatrist and he doesn't

00:23:35.420 want his blogging, which can be a little more controversial to bleed into his real work. He could

00:23:40.200 get fired. His, his clients would have a problem with it. So the New York Times says they wanted,

00:23:45.340 they contact him to do a story about his blogging. Now I've talked about Scott Alexander's blog before.

00:23:51.780 It's one of the most brilliant and insightful things you've ever seen, like ever. That's a pretty big

00:23:59.940 statement, right? But it is one of the most insightful, smart, fresh views you've never seen before. I've

00:24:07.780 quoted him before. One of the most interesting thinkers in the world, really, and very well

00:24:15.360 informed. And the New York Times, of course, wants to do a story about it because he's so influential

00:24:20.580 and so good at it. But they decided they were going to dox him. They were going to do a complimentary

00:24:26.820 story about him because I guess the angle was he got a lot of stuff right about coronavirus before the

00:24:34.220 experts did. So it was going to be a complimentary story about how he got things right before the

00:24:40.160 experts were. And he's an influential, great blogger. And their policy is that they reveal real names.

00:24:47.700 And of course, he asked them not to. And they said, No, it's our policy. We have to reveal real names.

00:24:53.100 Now, they were going to write a positive story and destroy his life intentionally, knowing they were

00:25:04.380 doing it because it's just their policy. It's just their policy to use a real name. Yeah, we can't make

00:25:10.360 an exception because it's just our policy. And I don't know if they did or they're going to. I don't

00:25:18.560 know the status of this. I can't tell if but what what it caused him to do was to delete his entire

00:25:26.120 blog, not just a blog post, but the entire history of his blog, one of the most valuable contributions

00:25:34.300 to civilization. And he deleted it. He kept the backup. So it's not gone forever. But he deleted it

00:25:45.180 and, and wrote about it. Now, I could not hate the New York Times more than I do right now. It's

00:25:54.680 just evil. There isn't really any other way to spin this. If you're telling me that the New York

00:26:00.820 Times has a rule, and they just can't break that rule. Well, okay. But it's an evil rule. Do you know

00:26:09.000 who else had a rule? Hiller. He had a rule too. They weren't very good rules. We wish he didn't

00:26:16.420 have them. So New York Times, why don't you take your rules and shove them so far up your fucking 0.99

00:26:23.000 evil asses that we can see it in your eyes. You shouldn't even be able to stay in business after 1.00

00:26:32.260 something like this. Because it's one thing to do something accidentally. I'm very forgiving about

00:26:38.180 accidents. It's one thing to have a different opinion. I accept different opinions. It's one

00:26:47.000 thing to be political. It's one thing to be hyperbolic. It's one thing to fail the fact

00:26:51.260 checking. There are lots of ways to have bad behavior. But doxing a guy that you actually

00:26:57.260 like, and you're writing a story because of how much he's added to the world. And you know you're

00:27:03.060 going to destroy his life by revealing him, that is so fucking evil that I can't even wrap my head 0.99

00:27:11.200 around it. Amazing. And by the way, this guy isn't political. There's nothing political here. He's 0.99

00:27:18.600 literally just a helpful voice in the world. That's it. And they're destroying his whole fucking

00:27:25.960 life. Oh, it's worse than that. Because his patients will suffer. He's a psychiatrist with 1.00

00:27:31.720 a big group of patients. Do you think that they will be unaffected by this? No. No, they will be

00:27:37.680 affected. Fucking evil. All right. In the other thing that the president tweeted was just an article 1.00

00:27:48.120 I retweeted, which was that supposedly the only pollster to show Trump winning the state of

00:27:56.080 Michigan. So in other words, he has that distinction for accuracy in 2016, basically has a projection

00:28:06.180 that's completely different than the major polls. So you know, the major polls are showing Biden winning

00:28:11.040 by very large margins. And the guy who was the most accurate pollster on a state basis, at least for

00:28:17.980 some of the key states, says that his polling using a little different methodology, which has been

00:28:24.080 more accurate in the past, shows us neck and neck. It's neck and neck. And he suggests that there might

00:28:33.260 be more shy Trump supporters than 2016. That's right. It's neck and neck. And there might be twice as

00:28:44.220 many shy supporters who are not admitting who they're going to vote for than 2016.

00:28:52.580 So the president retweeted that because that obviously is good for him.

00:29:01.020 So let's see. Trump put a temporary hold on workers' visas from foreign countries. You know,

00:29:08.120 this is a topic I don't know a lot about. But I also don't understand why the tech workers are

00:29:14.980 being treated differently than other kinds of workers. I could see wanting to keep employment

00:29:23.040 good in this country if there were types of jobs that Americans could do and wanted to do. But in the

00:29:29.580 tech world, bringing people in from other countries, let's say India, if you bring in an engineer from

00:29:39.060 India, does that subtract from America or add to India or add to America? Well, have you ever met

00:29:48.880 any technical people from India? They're really good. I'm not saying that, you know, as a general

00:29:56.840 statement that every person from India is a technical expert, I'm saying that I've met a lot

00:30:01.580 of technical experts who were born in India. And they're really good. They've started companies,

00:30:09.140 some of the biggest companies in the country. Or at least people who were born in India started the

00:30:14.960 biggest countries, not necessarily just worker visa people. But my understanding of economics is that

00:30:22.600 the more people who have that kind of skill, the better. The more, the better. Because there's an

00:30:30.400 unlimited demand. There's no limit to the number of people who have money, and would like to do a

00:30:36.840 startup of some kind. And the main thing that's preventing them from doing that startup is that

00:30:41.700 they can't find a technical person to do the technical stuff. It's the number one problem. You

00:30:47.340 probably think the number one problem for startups is getting money, right? It's actually not, in my

00:30:53.960 opinion. Somebody might disagree with this. The number one problem is finding technical talent.

00:31:00.060 If you get that right, you can usually get money too. So I don't understand this, but I also haven't

00:31:06.600 heard the full argument. And it's a temporary restriction. We'll see if that becomes permanent

00:31:12.460 through the end of the year. I want to read you how CNN is currently characterizing the Russia

00:31:22.880 collusion coup against the president. So that's my characterization, that the Russia collusion

00:31:31.520 hoax was essentially a coup to remove the president. So that's the way I would call that.

00:31:36.840 So CNN, of course, you would say to yourself, well, they were certainly hugely embarrassed by covering

00:31:45.220 it as if it were true for, I don't know, two years or whatever, only to find out the entire thing was

00:31:50.180 was just a hoax and made up and the president didn't do anything wrong. And it was bad actors in

00:31:56.640 the government, etc. Exactly the opposite of what CNN reported for two years. So do they say, gosh,

00:32:03.680 we should have got that wrong? No, this is the way they're deciding. This is an opinion piece,

00:32:09.060 doesn't matter who it's on their, it's on CNN.com. And here's their characterization of that. I just

00:32:15.400 got to read you the sentence because it's hilarious. While quote, while some misconduct related to the

00:32:21.420 Russia investigations has been uncovered, that's just the first part of the sentence. Some misconduct.

00:32:27.100 Yeah, there has been some misconduct. A little bit. Hardly worth mentioning. You don't need any details.

00:32:35.520 But there was some misconduct related to the Russia investigation. It's been uncovered. Yeah.

00:32:42.060 And several former FBI officials have been chided for their handling of certain aspects of the probe.

00:32:49.060 chided. They have been chided. Now, CNN does not say that the FBI did very, very bad things as part of

00:33:00.880 what seemed to be a larger plot to remove the president who was legally elected. No, they say

00:33:07.720 that several former FBI officials have been chided. Oh, they've been chided. I don't even know where

00:33:15.840 you come up with the word chided. Could you come up with a softer word to criticize somebody? Let me see

00:33:24.400 if I can use these, this word. Joseph Goebbels, Goebbels, who was the Nazi propagandist. A number of

00:33:36.720 people have chided him for some of the things he did. Yeah, Joseph Goebbels, he was chided, got chided a

00:33:44.200 little bit. How about Ho Chi Minh? Killed millions of people. That's one way to say it. I mean,

00:33:52.800 if you were being unkind, you'd say, oh, yeah, he murdered millions of people. But if you were CNN,

00:33:58.560 you might say Ho Chi Minh has been chided for some of the things he did in office while he was in power.

00:34:05.720 All right. Let's see. Let's talk about the Bubba Wallace noose story. So the news, if you could

00:34:17.720 call it that, is that a rare NASCAR driver who was African American, apparently there are not many of

00:34:26.480 them. But Bubba Wallace claims that there was a noose hanging in the garage, the part of the garage

00:34:34.660 where his car was, I guess. And that was considered a racist act. And the NASCAR people got behind him

00:34:42.740 and really supported him, which was good. Now, I said to myself on day one, how many of you remember,

00:34:52.220 can you back me up on this? Because a big part of what I do is I make predictions based on persuasion

00:34:59.040 and then I check them. Right? Have I told you that you have to check your predictions because

00:35:07.140 otherwise you have no idea. You have no idea how well you understand the world. You don't know how

00:35:14.240 your filter on the world works unless you make predictions and then check how you did. What was

00:35:20.280 the first thing I said when I heard about the Bubba Wallace noose story in the comments? What was the

00:35:27.960 first thing I said? Where's the picture? Right? I told you that if there's no picture, it's a hoax.

00:35:37.660 We live in a world where we're bristling with camera equipment. Every single person, every one of you

00:35:43.880 has a camera within arm's reach, probably your phone, right? Are you telling me that people saw

00:35:51.280 a freaking hoax? I'm sorry, that they saw a noose hanging in the garage of a black NASCAR driver 0.97

00:35:58.860 and nobody took out a phone? Really? Nobody took out a phone? So that, so let me ask you this.

00:36:09.560 Who else told you at the beginning of the story that if you haven't seen the photo already,

00:36:15.960 it's probably fake? Now I have to say probably because if this is, if this turns out to be a real

00:36:21.180 story, let me be the first to say it's appalling. You know, it's a, it's a 10 and a 10. It's like a cross

00:36:29.380 burning on your lawn. We all condemn it. There's no, no hesitation, no equivocation, horrible,

00:36:36.400 horrible act if it's true, but without a photo. So two out of three, uh, uh, race stories like this 0.75

00:36:47.980 turned out to be false, according to the wall street journal, actually two out of three, it was

00:36:52.120 researched. So the odds are that any of these stories have a 67% chance of being false. If you

00:36:59.040 don't know, if you don't know for sure and you can't check it out yourself, that's the filter you

00:37:04.720 should put on it. Well, it'd be terrible if it's true, but there's a one in three chances true.

00:37:11.200 So there's been, uh, some of you are saying in the comments already, um, some people looked into it

00:37:16.840 and it turns out that there are photos and even live video, which is much harder to, to fake. It's,

00:37:24.360 it's possible, but you could do it, but it's harder. There's video of that same garage

00:37:29.660 with that, with a, a pull rope for the garage doors or a rope hangs down and you grab it and

00:37:37.440 you pull it to raise and lower the garage. Uh, I have exactly that in a utility garage where I have

00:37:44.500 a rope that I pull. Do you know what makes it easier to, to pull that rope? Just take a guess.

00:37:51.360 What would make it a little easier to, to grab the rope? Yeah, you put a little loop on the end

00:37:59.420 and there are actual videos from November, November of that same garage, garage number four

00:38:09.760 with the pull rope from the thing hanging down. And there in miniature about the size of a hand,

00:38:17.820 not the size of a neck, not the size of something that could go over a head, but more like the size

00:38:24.700 of something you put your hand through that was noose-like at the bottom. Now, if I hadn't seen it

00:38:34.460 on video, because somebody was just filming back in November and they were just filming the cars

00:38:38.960 and they go right by it and you see the, you see the thing hanging down and it's obviously just a pull

00:38:44.760 rope for the garage. Now, uh, somebody cut it off allegedly so that there are no photos that you

00:38:53.220 could take now because it was cut off. But back in November, you could, you could see it and it was

00:39:00.660 clearly just a, a, a pull rope. So that's the biggest, one of the biggest stories in the country.

00:39:06.300 And it's just so obviously debunked once you see the video, but how many people will see the video?

00:39:14.760 What percentage of the company of the country do you think we'll ever know that that was a,

00:39:20.040 that that's fake? Well, let's look at say CNN because, uh, let's see. I just, it's funny.

00:39:32.720 That story seems to have disappeared from the front page. Just checking, checking. All right.

00:39:40.820 Well, let me do a search on CNN and see if they've got any kind of a story. So all this new story,

00:39:51.180 see if there are any updates. Uh, nope. That story seems to have disappeared. I just did a search

00:39:59.320 on CNN's page and the story isn't even there. It doesn't exist as any kind of a story in a search.

00:40:07.400 Uh, unless they come up in the wrong order. We'll see. Oh, it is there, but it came up in the wrong

00:40:14.640 order. All right. Uh, I'll just quickly look at it and see if it mentions, if it mentions even the,

00:40:21.960 um, possibility that there are videos of this in the past, blah, blah, blah. People looking into it,

00:40:29.300 uh, strengthens our resolve. Uh, it's a horrible thing. Um, he set the race, blah, blah, blah. It's a

00:40:37.960 despicable act. This will not break me. Um, and by the way, somebody pointed out that the garages

00:40:46.540 in question have these, you know, multimillion dollar cars and tools in them. Of course they

00:40:51.640 have video. You know, they have video because, because it's like super expensive equipment and all

00:40:58.140 these garages. So there's video of all this. So we're going to know for sure. Uh, Phelps would

00:41:04.920 not say what, if any video cameras may have been recorded at the track. So the official won't say

00:41:11.300 if there was video recording. Why would you not say that? Is it for security purposes? No. It's

00:41:19.380 because somebody looked at the video and they know that there's nothing, there's nothing there. Uh,

00:41:24.960 people are enraged. Yeah. Okay. The sick person who perpetrated it must be found and exposed.

00:41:33.220 Yeah. So CNN does not make any reference to the fact that there exists video on YouTube,

00:41:41.380 which shows it in November as a handful. Do you, do you think that they ought to at least

00:41:50.080 mention that other outlets are treating it differently? So this is the world you live in

00:41:56.080 where the world is presented to you as completely fake. All right. So, uh, give credit to the last

00:42:06.460 refuge that I think did the most thorough job of showing photographs, you know, before and after

00:42:12.140 and debunking it. But there, there are other sources for that, but the last refuge seems to have been

00:42:17.860 all over it. All right. Um, and that's about all I wanted to talk about today. Um, some of you saw my

00:42:29.180 ring. I'll just say again, just for the purposes of completeness. I was supposed to get married

00:42:35.260 with Christina in May, but coronavirus delayed that and we rescheduled and rescheduled and we were

00:42:44.420 trying to figure out honeymoon and wedding date. And finally we decided that we would just call

00:42:50.920 ourselves married. We will actually get married, uh, within the next 30 days probably. Um, but we

00:43:01.020 decided that the government doesn't get to decide if we're married. You know what I mean? Uh, it's one

00:43:07.480 thing to say, okay, there's a process. Everybody has the same process. You have to go through these

00:43:12.240 things and then you're married. And I don't mind that if it's easy, if it's traditional,

00:43:17.360 if the bride wants it, if the family wants it, I don't mind doing any of that stuff. 0.84

00:43:22.380 But if the government is preventing me from getting married because, you know, there's a

00:43:29.680 coronavirus and it's just harder. I mean, it took us a long time just to get the paperwork, to get the

00:43:35.080 license because nothing's easy. You know, you can't go to the office in person and you got to do things

00:43:40.180 in the mail and there's a website, but it doesn't look like it worked. So you're not really sure if

00:43:45.320 it can through. And then you have to get a person who takes it in person down there for you and signs

00:43:50.120 it. It's like they've made it unnecessarily complicated. But does anybody know why the

00:43:55.500 ceremony matters? Does the ceremony matter just because you have a witness? I mean, I could get,

00:44:01.820 I could get a witness to sign a document. It doesn't need to be a ceremony. So here's the point.

00:44:06.700 Here's my point. I don't believe the government gets to tell me if I'm married. Do you agree with

00:44:14.380 me? Would you agree that the government is not in control of whether I am married? I'm married.

00:44:23.460 That's it. So it's not the government's decision. I don't want their opinion on it. When things are

00:44:30.340 back to normal, as soon as we can do the ceremony, we'll do it. So we'll wrap up the details. But don't

00:44:35.340 tell me I'm not married. I'm just not legally married. Somebody says, why at your age get

00:44:42.860 married? Just stay as domestic partners. Well, there are lots of reasons. But one of them,

00:44:48.360 and a lot of it has to do with the level of commitment you're showing to each other, etc.

00:44:52.940 But a lot of it is financial, right? Because you want to, you're both committing yourself,

00:44:59.100 and you have to know that there's a financial, you know, safety for both of you, etc. So that part's

00:45:04.940 just common sense. You have to get that taken care of. But the other part is just existing in a world

00:45:12.460 that requires labels. Yeah, the optics of it is exactly as somebody is saying. The ability to say

00:45:19.440 somebody is my wife is really convenient. It's really easy. It's clean. It says everything you need

00:45:26.160 to say. All those other words for it, this is my domestic partner, blah, blah, blah, blah. It just

00:45:34.660 seems to minimize the other person, and it just takes something away from it.

00:45:42.700 So, of course, it's a considered decision. But there are some just advantages to it. Just makes

00:45:49.920 everything a little bit cleaner in our current system.

00:45:55.940 Prenup, of course. Yes. Prenup is just pretty much standard business if you're my age and you have

00:46:05.520 assets. Somebody's asking about divorce and division of assets. No, don't worry. I'm an adult. I live in

00:46:14.100 the real world. I know all the risks. And we do what we needed to do.

00:46:26.040 Oh, did Project Veritas drop a new video? How about that? Let's look at it. Don't go away.

00:46:35.240 Don't go away. The best part of this periscope just happened. All right. So, remember I told you

00:46:44.760 last week that there would be some major red pills dropping? And I said, it's not one story. It's

00:46:52.900 going to be like a quilt in which there'll be squares of the quilt, which will be dropping from

00:47:00.260 the sky. And one of these squares may have just dropped. Let's say Facebook, Project Veritas,

00:47:15.120 and see what comes up. Project Veritas exposed CNN and Facebook. Is this the new one? No,

00:47:26.140 that's the old one. Let's see what Project Veritas has going. Project Veritas. All right. Why is this

00:47:39.080 not coming up? All right. Looks like this is the new one. Damn it. All right. We'll talk about this

00:47:48.820 tomorrow. But give me a chance to look it up. 623. Here it is. Daily Caller has it. Project Veritas

00:48:00.460 video shows Facebook content moderators discussing censoring conservatives reveals, quote, exception

00:48:08.380 given to Don Lemon for hate speech. So let me let me play it for you. Have you not heard it?

00:48:16.760 Let me play it for you. You don't have to see the faces because they're all sort of semi-concealed

00:48:23.440 and stuff.

00:48:32.620 Let me know if you can't hear it.

00:48:36.400 It's simple. As you say, be brave. I am more brave than I am scared of any trouble that anybody

00:48:44.180 could give me for breaking some stupid NDA. I think the truth is more powerful than any 0.99

00:48:49.020 NDA. To stick up for the voice of the people. Facebook's notorious for it. And they say they

00:48:58.060 don't, but it's clear that people's content opens up because it's been defiltered off the

00:49:02.200 queue. It's a very progressive company who's very anti-MAGA. If you see a conservative country,

00:49:07.940 you just get rid of it. Right. I don't give a s***. I'll delete it. You're going to do

00:49:12.780 this. You're going to do this. You're going to do this. You're going to do this. You're

00:49:14.780 going to do it all. Zach McElroy came to Project Veritas because of what he saw at his job at

00:49:19.660 Facebook in Tampa, Florida. He saw and filmed evidence of structural and cultural bias inside

00:49:25.940 Facebook discriminating against Republicans and conservatives. McElroy's story raises serious

00:49:32.660 doubts about the under oath testimony of Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg to Congress, where he claimed

00:49:39.180 Facebook has no political bias. What percentage of the flagged posts in the civic harassment

00:49:47.460 queue, as it's called, were Republican conservative? I saw a stark contrast between Republicans versus

00:49:56.120 Democrats in that queue. I saw upwards of 75 to 80 percent of the posts in that queue were

00:50:01.520 from Republican pages, politicians, journalists, and pages that supported the president or supported

00:50:09.960 conservatives. What does that tell you about Facebook slash cognizance algorithm here? Well,

00:50:17.840 certainly the algorithm is not human, but it had to be made by a human. So for 75 to 80 percent of the

00:50:25.980 posts to be targeting Republicans and conservatives, you can say it was a bot, but somebody had to

00:50:31.500 design that algorithm. So really, somebody at Facebook. Some people on Capitol Hill have expressed

00:50:37.740 interest in this ratio that you speak of. Are you willing to potentially testify under oath that

00:50:45.740 three quarters of the posts that you saw flagged were in one political direction? To the best of my

00:50:51.900 knowledge and ability, yes. To me, censorship online is one of the biggest issues facing us in the lead up to

00:50:57.420 the 2020 election. Well, insofar as I was not somebody who was working behind the scenes on policy, but rather

00:51:08.620 as someone who was enforcing policy, I saw everybody around me and I saw myself and I did a little bit of

00:51:17.180 comparing and I thought, you know, there really are not very many conservatives here. And because there are not

00:51:23.420 very many conservatives, I really don't think there are very many people sticking up for the voice of

00:51:26.860 conservatives at a company that handles all the, at a company that handles the flow of conversations,

00:51:39.340 basically a large portion of the discourse online. And we are essentially in charge of what gets said and

00:51:47.580 what gets stifled. Uh, you mentioned the election and the cons can talk a little bit more about your

00:51:54.620 concerns as it pertains to Facebook meddling or being involved in the 2020 election. Well, we know

00:52:01.020 publicly and as someone, even before I started working there, we saw plenty of, we've seen plenty of

00:52:09.580 statements from Mark Zuckerberg, uh, publicly about how they don't want to meddle in the election. They want to

00:52:16.300 give everybody a free, you know, a platform for everybody to speak freely. But we know that privately

00:52:25.740 they have very different opinions and we've seen that with the previous Facebook story that you guys

00:52:30.220 published. And I had no doubt that what he said publicly is not what he means to do privately.

00:52:37.820 Let's go to the Trump cartoon. This one here, is this something that you, you, all right? I, it's a

00:52:49.420 little bit longer than I thought it was going to be, but I will call your attention to it and say you

00:52:55.100 should all watch it because today, but today might be a lot different than you thought it was going to be.

00:53:00.940 Okay. So, um, uh, I think you're going to find out a lot in this video. I haven't seen it all,

00:53:07.740 but, uh, it's going to be a fun day. All right. That's it for today. I'll talk to you tomorrow.

00:53:13.340 Bye.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams - June 23, 2020

Episode 1036 Scott Adams： White-Looking Jesus, Fake News Being More Shameless Than Usual, Presidential Tweets

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